Book of Joshua

 This week we have done a cursory study of the book of Joshua.  Four years ago I wrote a blog post about the symbolism in the conquest of the city of Jericho. It is a pretty good post about the purpose of the book of Joshua, and some symbolism of the fall of Jericho. Some of what I wrote there bears repeating.  The Book of Joshua was written many years after the fact, and was written for a specific purpose: i.e to give Israel a pattern for covenant behavior that leads to God's help and favor. It is written in historic hyperbola.  In Joshua it states that the Israelites totally destroyed various populations, but then later in Joshua and Judges, these very cities are mentioned as if they are still existing communities. For example, in Joshua 11 the Israelites destroy the village of Hazor and burn it to the ground, but in Judges 4, Deborah conquers it again.  In Joshua 10, Hebron is destroyed, but in Joshua 15 it is given to Caleb as an inheritance. It seems clear that when the book of Joshua states that a town was totally destroyed, it means that Israel had some kind of victory there.

There were a few other things that podcasters mentioned this week that I want to mention here. In my 2022 post I mentioned that there was no evidence that there was a walled city at Jericho at the time that Israel left Egypt during the late bronze Age. Kerry Muhlestein in The Scriptures are Real said that he worked on a Jericho excavation and there is evidence that Jericho existed as a walled city in the late bronze age, but that one of the main archeologists that adamantly denies that it did exist then purposefully denied the evidence because of her own bias. So that was interesting.  

Still, I don't know if proving that Jericho was a real city or not is super important.  I stand by my earlier exertion that the book of Joshua was written, or at least edited, by a later author who used folk stories about the founding of Israel in the promised land to teach about the importance of covenant obedience. Twice in Joshua there are formal covenant ceremonies.  The first is at the beginning of the book in Chapter 5. After the people cross the Jordan river, the males are circumcised (2), then they kept the passover (v. 10) during which they would have recounted the story of the Exodus. Then Joshua meets the angel of the Lord (v. 15). 

The second is in Joshua 24.  Joshua knows he is about to die, so he gathers the people in Shechem where the Ark of the Covenant is.  Joshua reminds them again about their history, going this time clear back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (v. 2-4). Then he recounts all the Lord did for them since they left Egypt, and came into the Promised Land (v. 6-13).  Then he says, "Therefore, fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth...Choose thee this day whom ye will serve...but for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." (v 14-15)  The people answer and promise that they will serve Jehovah (v. 24).  Finally the story states, "And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elder that outlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord, that he had done for Israel." (v. 31)  It is a "tada!" statement,  "Look, this is what it means to serve the Lord." 

The Shema

 This week we read chapters from the book of Deuteronomy as part of Come Follow Me.  When I was in college I used to think of the Book of Deuteronomy as "ether in print."  There were  actually a few times when I was having trouble falling to sleep because of stress or anxiety, so I started reading Deuteronomy and then was able to nod off.  I don't hold that opinion any more, and have found much of interest in the book.

Tradition holds that Deuteronomy was written by Moses, but most scholars believe that it was probably passed down orally until much later.  Some scholars associate it with the text found my Josiah when he was restoring temple worship in Israel (2 Kings 22:8).  When Josiah read it he recognized that it foretold that Israel would be destroyed because they did not keep their covenants with the Lord and followed after idols.  Josiah was so upset his tore his clothes (a sign of deep despair).  A few years after Josiah's reign, Israel was taken into captivity. 

One of the main jewels of the Book of Deuteronomy is the Shema. It is the text of a covenant or commandment given from the Lord to the people of Israel right before entering the "promised land." The Shema is found in Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 and is called the Shema because the first word of 6:4 is "shema", which means "hear" or "attend".  It contains a passage that Jesus later quoted when a lawyer asked him what was the greatest commandment: 

"And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all they soul and with all they might." (v. 5) (see also Matt 22:37)

This is a notoriously difficult passage to translate. The word לבב, means heart, but in the Hebrew language the heart isn’t the center for emotion like it is in English, (that’s the abdomen). The heart is the center of true understanding and devotion.  

The word soul, נפש, comes for the word for your neck.  When the Lord creates Adam, he breaths into him the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). The neck it where that breath, symbolizing your spirit, goes in and out of your body. When breath stops, life stops. Even though this word means neck, it is used as an idiom for your essential self in the Bible more than it is used to represent your physical neck.

The last word, מאדך (me'odecha) comes from an adverb meaning "very" or "a lot." When God finished creating the world and he said it was “very good” the term for very is מאד, me'od (Genesis 1:31). But here it isn’t used as an adverb, but as a noun. That last letter "ך" is a suffix that means "your". The the word means something like "your very-ness" or "your much-ness". It isn’t used in this form anywhere else in the whole Old Testament, only this passage. I think the writer couldn’t come up with a word strong enough to express how much of yourself you should use to worship God, so he made up one. 

The author here is using amazingly strong words to try to communicate how much we should love the Lord and how faithfully we should serve him. I think it is why this prayer has endured a central tenet of Jewish worship and is so powerful and meaningful for Jewish people today.

Of course, because Jesus repeats it in the New Testament, it is also a powerful part of Christian worship. Every Christian must ask themselves if we worship God with all our heart (devotion), soul (essential being) and me'odecha.

Shema Israel

Jesus is the GOAT: a look at the Day of Atonement

This week in Come Follow Me we read about a couple of the sacrifices regularly conducted in the Tabernacle. This year I have been able to see more than ever before how all of these ancient practices, although they seem a bit barbaric to us, were actually pointing to the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is as if God was sitting up in heaven with Mother God, and trying to come up with as many ways as possible to foreshadow the life and mission of Jesus. They tried using every sense--taste, smell, touch, sound, sight. They used a variety of ceremonies and places--the altar of sacrifice, the altar of incense, the laver, the show bread, the menorah, the curtains... everything foreshadowing some aspect of Jesus' life and mission as our Savior. 

I can't go into all of them in one post, so I wanted to talk about the Day of Atonement. It is one of the high holy days in Judaism, and the only time that anyone was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies. It is explained in Leviticus 16:2-22.  The high priest first made a sin offering for himself, washed himself, and changed into specific clothing to represent his ritualistic purity. Then he took two goats and presented them at the door of the Tabernacle. There they cast lots to establish which goat will be sacrificed and which will be set free as the scapegoat. The first goat was offered up as a sin offering for all the people. The high priest brought the blood of the offering into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it on the Mercy Seat (the cover of the Ark of the Covenant). Finally, he went out of the Holy Place, confessed over the live goat all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and then sent him off into the wilderness. 

Some of the symbolism here is really clear.  The first goat represents Jesus whose blood atones for the sins of the people.  Just as Jesus will advocate before the throne of God for us, the blood of the first goat is placed on the Mercy Seat, which represents the throne of God. This symbolic act says, "Look father, I have given my blood for these people, therefore have mercy on them."

But what of the other goat? The sins of the House of Israel are ritualistically placed on the second goat and that goat is taken out of the camp.  One obvious symbolism is that the second goat also represents Christ.  He takes upon him our sins and then removes them from the community. By his departure (i.e. his death) the community is cleansed of sin. 

But why does one goat die and one goat live?  Jesus died for our sins (first goat) and thus reconciles us to God.  He also takes away our sins, like the second goat, but where does he go with them?  Does he pass them off to another community?  Is it understood that he would die in the wilderness?  One Jewish commentary, Mishna Yoma 6:6, suggests that the scapegoat was pushed off a cliff.  This symbolized that those sins were permanently removed out of the community in a way that they wouldn't come back. 

What if,  however,  there is another foreshadowing here.  Maybe the scapegoat represents what Jesus did after his death.  The casting out of the scapegoat does happen after the sacrifice of the first goat. We know from the scriptures that after he was killed, Jesus went and ministered to the spirits in spirit prison (1 Peter 3: 19-20). Couldn't that be like a wilderness of type? We also understand that Jesus visited his other "sheep" (John 10:16). From a Biblical point of view, that could represent the Gospel going to the Gentiles. From a Book of Mormon point of view, it could represent Jesus visiting the saints in the Americas. Both of these groups could be metaphorically on the other side of a barren wilderness because they were separate and different from the community where Jesus taught during his ministry.

This is all a bit of a stretch. None of the podcasters I listened to this week brought up this idea as a possible symbolism of the scapegoat.  Still, who knows? There has to be some reason why there are two goats and one is left alive. In all the other sacrifices, the animals are killed. 

It is easy to see symbolism if you are looking for it, and it is easy to take it too far.  One might even suggest that a "goat" is used in this sacrifice instead of a sheep or bull because God knew that 3000 years later in English the term "G.O.A.T" would be an acronym for Greatest of All Time, and Jesus was certainly the greatest man of all time. That's silliness, of course, but it could make a good t-shirt, especially for those who know their Old Testament.  In a way it explains the symbolism of all the sacrifices of the Levitical worship: "Jesus is the GOAT".